Home from the Hunt

Unwec and Unbac made they way back to their village in high spirits. They kept congratulating themselves on their cleverness and skill in procuring the boar. In reality, they were simple thieves. They had not earned the meat in their hunt, they had merely stolen it from the rightful owners.

Unbac carried the spear he found near the boar. He knew such things existed, because he had seen pictographs in a cave once where hunters carried them. His people just weren’t interested, or industrious enough to make spears of their own. Their village was on an inlet of the ocean, where a thin layer of shale deposit existed, but only the fishermen bothered to sharpen longer pieces of it as daggers to stab and clean the fish. Hunting spears were just too much work to build, even if they had the skills.

The Uns didn't have the skill to use the proper type of wood for the shaft, or to fasten a sharpened blade or tip to it. To be fair, they had never actually seen a workable hunting spear, so they had no sample to imitate. Now they had one. As they walked, Unbac used the spear as a walking stick, with the blade down. He didn't have the sense to realize that repeated contact with hard earth and stones would dull the blade. But then Unbac wasn't the sharpest shale on the beach, either. Unwec was older, and infinitely wiser. He had seen twenty hunting seasons. Unbac had only seen fifteen.

This hunt was his very first. It was supposed to make a man of him. Instead, it made only a thief of him. His moral fibre was never particularly strong to begin with, so he had no issues with taking what he wanted. As the older brother, Unwec should have objected to the attack on the other hunters. He could have suggested bartering berries for part of the meat, but it simply didn't occur to him.

When they finally reached the outskirts of their village, a small group of children ran out to meet them. They were greeted as conquering heroes with shouts and questions all around.

“You have meat. At last we have meat!

“What is that animal? I don't think I've seen one of those before.”

“ How did you kill it? Tell us how you killed it.”

“What is that thing you carry?”

“Is it a weapon? Did you make it?

“How is it used?”

The two brothers waded through the children with laughter and short answers. Only their father Undoc would be told the truth of the hunt. As one of the governing elders of the small tribe, he would decide what to do with the information, and whether to share it with the other elders.

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